12 July 2009 - Pollok House

Today we headed off to a National Trust property - Pollok House - in Glasgow to have a look round, not only did Amber get to do another Gnasher hunt but there was also a murder mystery to solve - this involved a lot of reading of clues as you wandered round and then at the end some totally random guessing as to who the murderer was.

Now Andrew wrote the above paragraph and I have to say the murder mystery was solved not in a "totally random" fashion but through careful elimination and fact finding. Essentially the guy that did it....... well his eyes were too close together........ so he did it!!! The murdered chap's wife was also seriously dodgy but I put that down to the sherry ... she looked like a drinker.

I like Pollok House. It's been home to the Maxwell family. You can't say it's an overly grand house but I think the size of it makes it manageable. You could imagine living in this house whereas some of the bigger, grander houses are just too large to even imagine a family living in it. Pollok House was also one of the places my late father-in-law used to work as Head Gardener.



One aspect to the garden that proved very popular with the kids was the boxed hedge area. Makes a great maze as Amber and Alex discovered.

What a great idea for a fallen tree stump......... carve it into a cow like this........... how funny is that? Alas the poor cow appears to have had 2 rump steak stolen from his rear end!!! Whoever it was........ PUT IT BACK!!!



There were also some horses, not carved in wood, but alive and well in the stable block at the rear of the big house. Amber shot over and was happily patting it.

If you look at the expression on the horses face I swear it's smiling down at Amber!

And to finish off a distant picture of the entire house. It's a bit back to front really. This aspect looks better than the front entrance of the earlier pictures. But I guess the sweeping staircase in the main front entrance more than makes up for a simple, stone entrance way.